ECONOMY

In a victory for environmental justice, a California appeals court on February 15 dismissed the California Independent Petroleum Associations’s lawsuit against youth organizations from South Los Angeles and Wilmington, the Center for Biological Diversity and the city of Los Angeles.

Judge Terry A. Green of the California 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed a previous order by the L.A. Superior Court denying the special motions by the nonprofit organizations and the city to strike the oil industry lawsuit.

The oil industry is the most powerful corporate lobby in California, so this big win by the Center and youth groups is very significant.

One of the reasons behind the market's euphoric burst last Friday and spike in the Chinese Yuan on renewed "trade optimism" is that among the numerous soundbites and flashing red headlines, was that the US and China had reached a currency deal that would prevent Beijing from depreciating the yuan, even though no details were released.

“We have a deal on currency manipulation,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the head of a large Chinese delegation that’s in Washington for talks aimed at defusing the U.S.-China trade war.

U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his attacks on OPEC, saying the world is too fragile to handle a price hike and urging the cartel to “relax and take it easy.”

Trump’s war of words with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries punctuated big price swings last year, as he pressured the group to keep the taps open to help consumers. His latest foray was no exception and crude erased gains, sinking as much as 2.7 percent to $55.70 a barrel in New York, the biggest drop in two weeks.

Delinquent U.S. student loans reached a record $166 billion in the fourth quarter. But since “delinquency rates for student loans are likely to understate effective delinquency rates” by about half, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the figure is probably a far cry from reality. Factoring for understatement would imply that about $333 billion in student debt has not been serviced in at least three months. Putting this into perspective, $441 billion had been disbursed under Treasury’s entire Troubled Asset Relief Program to provide financial stability during the recession.

US President Donald Trump has promised to extend the temporary truce in the trade war with China, claiming that talks between the sides were so “productive” that he might even meet his counterpart Xi Jinping in person soon.

While crypto wealth tends to evoke images of “bros in Lambos,” those of us who believe in the altruistic potential of cryptocurrency know that the stereotype of the crypto wealthy isn’t accurate. Instead, the increase in the number of crypto charities, charity coins, and foundations?—?alongside the growing infrastructure for accepting and transferring cryptocurrency?—?shows a desire to use crypto as a force for global good...

It is hard to say exactly when it started – in 2008 in the midst of the credit crisis, in the early 2000's when the Federal Reserve initiated artificially low interest rates which helped to create the vast US mortgage bubble, or maybe the root goes all the way back to 1913 when the Federal Reserve was founded, but somewhere along the line America entered severe economic decay. One certainty is that signals in the fundamentals become visible every time the Fed inflates a financial bubble to stall a crash and then tightens policy without waiting for the economy to show true alignment.

It's been a long, strange economic boom since the nadir of the Global Financial Meltdown in 2009. A 10-year long boom that saw the S&P 500 rise from 666 in early 2009 to 2,780 and GDP rise by 43% has been slightly more uneven for most participants.

First and most importantly, household income hasn't risen by the same percentages as assets, GDP or costs of big-ticket expenses such as rent, healthcare and college tuition. The broadest measure of income, median household income, has registered a 23% increase in the past decade, roughly half of GDP gains and a mere fraction of stock market and housing gains.

It's well known income gains have skewed to the top, as revealed by Census Bureau data: Historical Income Tables: Household (US Census Bureau).

Last Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a disturbing interview to Fox Business Network in which he divulged his plans to form a NATO-type alliance against Iran. The U.S. has long accused Iran of supporting terrorism, accusations that have ramped up under the Trump administration. Pompeo said, without a hint of irony, that Iran’s government was leading the country into wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon, against the will of the Iranian people. Furthermore, the absurd accusation that Hezbollah is in Venezuela seemed a crude attempt to link the two countries in order to delegitimize both of their governments at the same time. The announcement foreshadows the potential for an abrupt and extreme escalation of U.S. attacks on Iran, similar to the recent escalation of U.S.-Venezuela relations.

A grouping of US politicians has threatened Ireland with economic repercussions if it bans goods from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Both houses in the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas, have approved a bill to outlaw Israel’s settlement exports during the past few months. Ten US lawmakers have reacted to the moves by warning that a ban could have “potentially severe implications” for the country.

In a letter to Irish political leaders, the 10 members of Congress suggested that some corporations investing would be violating US export regulations if the Dublin authorities enforced a ban on Israel’s settlement goods.

That appears to be a reference to rules introduced by the US during the 1970s in response to the Arab League boycott of Israel. Under these rules, US companies may not take part in boycott activities unless they have been approved by the federal government.

Contrast and direction are what matter in persuasion
Contrast current President Trump with current anti-Trumpers
Michael Steele on MSNBC, even the host wanted clarification
Steele’s comment was wrong on unprecedented levels
As socialism is flowering in AOC and others, Venezuela is rotting
Best possible contrast for capitalism versus socialism
Comb-salad eating Amy Klobuchar angry with staffer
Story probably isn’t exactly what we’re hearing
Black History Month White House event
Watch the video closely, OBVIOUS respect and affection
Breadline Bernie versus Crazy Bernie
The search for his most effective nickname
Crazy Bernie is the clear winner
The supply of hate crimes is less than demand for them by the left
What is the rate of interracial marriages? Has it increased over time?
Good indicator of the state of race relations
More racial crimes are being reported

News of the summit, which follows reports earlier this month that the two sides were in the process of planning a sit-down between the two leaders, though Beijing had proposed the summit be held at the Chinese resort island of Hainan following Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A meeting between the two leaders would be their first since a Dec. 1 dinner in Buenos Aires.

CNBC also reported that China has committed to buy $1.2 trillion in US goods (though a time frame for these purchases wasn't given, though it doesn't sound very realistic on its face).

The summit will offer the two leaders an opportunity to engage in marathon talks that will likely be needed to clinch a deal. Though the wide gulf between the two sides' positions suggests that an agreement is far from guaranteed.

In the fall of 2017, as China announced its dramatic new regulations pushing electric cars, the price of lithium and cobalt went through the roof. The two minerals, essential in the production of batteries for ‘New Energy Vehicles’, were highly sought. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Australia and other countries that are source of rare minerals sped forward, expanding extraction to meet rising demand.

However, the price of these two prized commodities is now decreasing, amid a glutted market. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Cobalt prices have fallen more than 30% in 2019 to their lowest level in two years” and “a lithium price index published by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence dropped for the 10th consecutive month in January.”

Venezuelan oil purchases by US energy companies saw a five-fold increase on a weekly basis from mid-February, almost reaching the level of pre-sanctions, according to the latest data released by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

According to the Paris-based agency, imports of crude oil from Venezuela to the US totaled 558,000 barrels per day during the week up to February 15, compared to 117,000 barrels per day the previous week.

Starting January 25, a few days before US sanctions went into effect, US companies imported 587,000 barrels a day.

This is why it is important to expose the direct relationship between Fed bubbles, Fed tightening and the collapse of the fundamentals. The central bank is deliberately creating economic crisis conditions. When chaos strikes, the Fed will attempt to obscure their dominant role in economic decline. It is our job to grab hold of their neck like pitbulls and never let them free.

U.S. government-sponsored student loan debt has become an escalating problem for the finances of many American households. The latest household debt report from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve indicates that Americans collectively owed $1.46 trillion in student loans at the end of 2018, more than any other category of non-housing related debt.

Recently, news network RT.com asked for comments on the question of the 80 tonnes of the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) gold reserves and their supposed storage location at the Bank of England's gold vaults in London. Based on some of those comments I made, RT has now published an article in its English language news website at www.rt.com about this Australian gold that the RBA claims is held in London.

The RT.com article, which was published on 18 February 2018, is titled "Hey UK! It's not just Venezuela, what happened to Australia's gold?", and can be read in full here on the RT website.

For the commentary, RT actually asked me quite a few interesting questions on both the Australian gold and other related gold topics. Since both the extended questions and the answers might be of interest to readers, we have decided to publish below the full set of questions and answers in Q&A format, which are as follows:

A combination of freak weather and decaying infrastructure could see dozens of cities in the Los Angeles area washed away by 20 feet of floodwater. Army engineers have pleaded with the federal government to avert a crisis.

Drought-stricken California seems an unlikely location for a flood of biblical proportions, but the US Geological Survey has repeatedly warned that a rare storm event, known as an “ARkStorm” could dump unprecedented amounts of rainfall onto the state, flooding the Central Valley, causing $300 billion in property damage and triggering the evacuation of millions of residents.

The storm is known as a ‘900 Year Storm,’ not because it happens every 900 years, but because it has a 1 in 900 chance of happening every year. A similar storm in 1861 dumped 36 inches of rain on Los Angeles and rendered it impossible to cross the Central Valley without a boat.

Berlin must not bow to any other countries’ “dictation” on its energy policy, the head of a German trade lobby in Russia has said, as he slammed the politicization of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

“As for issues of energy supply and energy security, Germany must not yield to dictation or influence of other countries, whether it is Russia or the US. Germany is not the 51st state of the US,” the chairman of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce, Matthias Schepp, said in Berlin on Thursday.

American farm exports are expected to plunge $1.9 billion in fiscal 2019, compared to the previous year, largely due to President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Soybean exports have been hit particularly hard, the agency’s chief economist, Robert Johansson, told the USDA Outlook Forum in Washington on Thursday, Reuters reported. Because of the trade dispute, soybean exports to China will have “plummeted by 22 million [metric] tons, or over 90 percent” through this month, Johansson said.

China has dropped to the fifth largest market for American farm exports, Johansson noted. It was the top foreign purchaser in 2017. China is buying only about 6 percent of total U.S. exports, compared with nearly 18 percent in 2014.

Today we stand on a point in the continuum, a possible inflection point in the direction the world will go. Embrace the tired and ugly Marxist filth that destroyed hundreds of millions of people in the twentieth century (and altered the trajectory of history) or reject it whole cloth and build new institutions learning from those incalculable mistakes and horrors.

Donald Trump has revealed himself to be a two-bit, tiny man with delusions of grandeur, the blackest of hearts and bad ideas. The only thing worse than him at this point is his opposition, those that erected this edifice of corruption, filth and death.

Mainstream media coverage of Venezuela gives the impression that President Nicolas Maduro is slowly starving his own people – a narrative which, as journalist Max Blumenthal found after surveying a massive supermarket in Caracas, is wildly deceptive.

Purchases of Venezuelan crude by US energy companies saw a five-fold weekly growth as of the middle of February, nearly reaching their pre-sanctions level, the latest data published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows.

Corporate media grieve for the barren shelves and empty bellies in Venezuela, but are the alleged food shortages real? After touring a supermarket in Caracas, Max Blumenthal found plenty to buy – even craft beer.
“Grocery shelves lie empty as food becomes increasingly scarce” in Venezuela, the UK Independent weeps. The country’s shops remain open but “sparsely stocked,” The Guardian laments. Even “basic commodities” such as toothbrushes aren’t available for purchase, CNN bemoans. “Hungry” Venezuelans must choose between “torture or starvation,” Bloomberg grimly concludes. Mainstream media coverage of Venezuela gives the impression that President Nicolas Maduro is slowly starving his own people – a narrative which, as journalist Max Blumenthal found after surveying a massive supermarket in Caracas, is wildly deceptive.